Shards of Looking Glass
by QuinnLark
Summary: He tastes like memories and the gin from my lips; he smells like rain and sandalwood. I cannot breathe for needing him. But neither of us are free of our chains.
1. 1

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you." - Austen

Shards of Looking Glass

It's funny and a little sad. I want to feel more than void as my head tilts from side to side while I take in this classic painting, breathing for a moment away from Jane Austen's words. She was the mistress of my own passion - maestro of my forte, but I cannot connect the way I once did. A clock hums somewhere in my mind, and my pulse beats with its rhythmic tick, but this place ... it's no longer for me.

I stand, allowing the frayed edges of my imagination to slip to the marble floor, and close the pages of a prophetess of my past. I'm not her - not anymore. I see now through the looking glass only dimly.

Paris is alive with spring. It's a city of romance created for mated and bonded pairs, and I am as lonely as a wilting rose in the desert. Another day and I will be lost to the sands.

He was my everything five hot summers ago - a brief eternity wrapped in Cabernet and cigarettes and water lilies. We rolled down and down together until there was nothing above but stars, and nothing but his body below. Then he left with the autumn leaves. The plains of my heart crunching under the boots walking away.

A year of seasons passed me by. And still another before a cold winter kissed the window panes with snowflakes and fire-side smiles healed my heart for someone as new as the green of spring.

The stirring of my blood for Edward, where we twined around and within each other, was replaced by Garrett's easy smile and eager steadfastness. Moments lost in the embers of daily life were made up in comfortable contentment.

And he's what I never knew I needed. Routine for a displaced soul like mine.

XxxxxxxX

A/N:

Rambles from my head to yours.

xoxo


	2. 2

2

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun." - Jane Austen

"Issa," Garrett says from across the table. My attention is drawn to big muddy eyes, staring up at me from the morning paper - a god they worship faithfully weekday mornings. You can take the business man out of America, but you can't take the American out of the business man. And herein lies Garrett Levine, business man extraordinaire. "I've been thinking about the big trip coming up."

After a promotion at his firm three months ago - partner, finally, Garrett has been going a million kilometers a minute. And he's a master at taking it all with calm ease, handling the curves gracefully.

The promotion brings with it multiple things. One: Garrett's name beside the other power players on signs and cards and off the lips of receptionists answering the phones. DesChamps, Baudin, Masson, et Levine does sound pretty damn great. I'm proud of him. Two: A paycheck the size of Lichtenstein - or quite possibly close to the country's GDP. Garrett is making more than he claims to have dreamt of in the States, and he isn't afraid to show it or share it. He just purchased the deed on a country manor on a vineyard in Loire. The country side is dotted with chateaux and hills rolling in grapes. Three: A two month-long trip to Thailand and Bangladesh in one week.

"What about it, ma loutre?" I ask, spreading some of the orange marmalade I made yesterday over my toasted baguette and brie. I know Garrett has to go on this excretion, and the more I think of it, the less it bothers me. We've been together three years, he and I. Then, he was pond-jumping bi-weekly to work from his Boston firm and woo his way into the great one he's with now, and into my world. I don't even recall how we got where we are.

"I think you should split your time between Loire and London."

Like most Americans, Garrett is pleased to give his opinion without being asked, but I cannot hold his culture against him, so I take it all with a grain of salt. Usually. Suggesting London is overreaching.

Love makes people act ridiculous, such as suggesting mending a bond torn for years in London. I can say such a thing because I'm the product of a love supposedly so true it broke rules and boundaries. My English father, Lord Charles Swan, couldn't bring a bastard love child home to his wife and family. And my French mother, Renée Montagne, was lucky enough to have a very modern, secular family who refused to disown their daughter, despite pressure from the staunchly Catholic villagers surrounding them.

I was born in the same farming cottage as my mother and her's before her, but I was never expected to stay there. My father put aside money for me - hundreds of thousands of British pounds for my education and anything my heart and mind flitted too. The flittering began with dreams and realizations of Oxford and English Literature, and ended with traveling the world.

Edward and I met on a train from Berlin to Prague. We spent twenty straight hours getting to know each other before we were backpacking together, sharing a pillow and blanket each night; inseparable and falling madly for each other.

I loved once. But I'm much better off with contentment n this place and time and existence, than passion.

It's a good mantra, at the very least.

xxxxxxxxx

A/N: ❤️


End file.
